Exhibition Catalogue, Tate Publications, 2001 (ISBN: 1-85437-379-X)
In 2001, David Ryan was invited by Christopher Grunneberg, Director of the Tate Liverpool, to write the catalogue essay for a major international exhibition on contemporary painting. The aim of the piece was to give a meaningful historical and theoretical context to a diverse collection of the work of eight contemporary abstract painters thrust into the curatorial limelight as another 'painting revival'.
This essay was reviewed in Art Press and has led to a number of related articles commissioned by Contemporary Visual Arts on artists represented in the exhibition such as David Reed and Franz Ackeramann.
Jonathan Harris of Liverpool University edited Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Painting: Hybridity, Hegemony, Historicism. Liverpool University Press 2004 which used the Hybrids exhibition in general and Ryan's catalogue essay in particular as a starting point.